Linda Mtoba finds love

Mtoba,25, who plays Zama Ngwenya on hit drama Isibaya, broke the hearts of many of Mzansi’s men when she posted her traditional-wedding pictures on Instagram this week.

A few did not take the news well, with one hurt male follower, Sipho Mokati, tweeting a request to become husband number two.

Bayanda Mzoneli from the National Association of Husbands and Boyfriends (Nahab) lamented on Facebook: “Nahab has noted, with disappointment and anger, the reports of Ms Linda Mtoba’s purported wedding over the weekend. As if colonisation, apartheid, land dispossession and the plundering of our natural resources by white people was not enough, a white man has now misappropriated, unto himself, one of our prized national assets, Linda Mtoba.”

Read the full post here:

Mxolisi Phendukwayo followed, creepily, with: “We are calling on all Nahab members to make contributions in putting together the money that was paid for lobola by this mlungu guy called Steve and pay him back his unholy lobola of our national key point.”

In an interview this week, Mtoba wore a silver-and-bronze wedding band. She admitted some of the comments were hurtful, while others were very funny.

“My husband and I read the comments and just laughed,” she said.

Mtoba declined to reveal her husband’s name, saying she needed to respect the fact that her husband was not the one in the entertainment industry.

The couple has been together for the past six years and met through a mutual friend in Durban. From the first day they “just clicked – it was love at first sight”, she says.

“It feels great to be a wife. There is a bit of a change because of our commitment to each other and now there is a sense of belonging,” she says.

Mtoba and her on-screen character, Zama, have one thing in common – they are both in love.

The proposal

She recalls how her husband proposed to her.

“It was a random Sunday and it was very cloudy, it was just the two of us in our home in the most natural state. We were just canoodling in the bedroom and I just saw him taking out a ring, he took my hand and put a ring on it. It was the most perfect thing ever and I couldn’t say no,” she says.

“I had told him before that the day he decides to propose to me, it has to be natural and simple because we’ve done many romantic things before.”

There will be a white wedding

More bad news for her male fans: Mtoba is busy planning her white wedding. It will be intimate and private with family and close friends.

Mtoba, who will have been in Isibaya for a year next month, never studied drama. The show was her first acting gig. The former isiZulu teacher was motivated by a friend to audition.

“My friend believed in me, more than I believed in myself. When she encouraged me to audition for Zama’s role, I doubted myself,” she says. “But when I left that audition room, I had a feeling I’d nailed it.”

However, she says she has turned down two big acting gigs because she feels she still has to perfect her craft before jumping to another ship.

Marriage and fame, she says, won’t change her.

“I’m still your girl from next door and I like spending time indoors. If I’m not shooting, I spend most of my time with my family in Umlazi. My family ... let me be what I want to be.”